


#MyScarsDontDefineMe

by MonPetitTresor



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Gabriel in the Bunker, Good Gabriel, Implied/Referenced Suicide attempt, Implied/Referenced Torture, MyScarsDontDefineMe, Sam Winchester's many deaths, Scars, Taking back power, Tattoos, The Cage, empowerment, gabriel is alive, pre-Sabriel - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-25
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2019-03-24 02:37:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13801605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MonPetitTresor/pseuds/MonPetitTresor
Summary: While surfing through Tumblr, Sam finds something that really, really interests him. With Gabriel's help, it's something he might actually be able to achieve, too.





	#MyScarsDontDefineMe

Sam happened to come across it all by chance one afternoon. He was cruising through Tumblr, a lazy sort of pastime for him. It was a great place to find random things and get distracted from the world for a little while. But, while he was scrolling through there, he came across a picture of the most beautiful tattoo he’s ever seen before. It was a huge phoenix stretched across someone’s back. The detail on it was amazing; it looked like someone had literally captured the phoenix in mid flight and somehow transferred it to this person’s skin.

When Sam looked closer, he caught the text underneath the image. **“Taking back my life. My scars don’t define me!”**

A closer look, zooming in on certain aspects of the tattoo, showed the faintest hints of scars underneath all that ink. This person… they’d gotten a tattoo to cover up their scars. The idea of that was something that hadn’t ever crossed Sam’s mind before. Scars were just a part of life. An ugly part, yes, but an inevitable one. He’d never even stopped to think about covering them up with anything.

The more he looked, the more images he found. Picture after picture after picture, all of people who had taken the scars that life gave them, and turned them into something beautiful.

One person put a story underneath theirs that gripped at Sam’s heart.

 _“My father was an abusive asshole,”_ the post said. “ _I spent most of my childhood terrified of him. When he’d come home, there was no telling what kind of mood he was going to be in, or what he might do. He always hit us. That was just inevitable. But how badly depended on just how much he’d had to drink. I did my best to keep him from going after my siblings._

_Because of that, I grew up with these scars all over my back and legs. I hated taking off my clothes for anyone to see me naked. Then, I saw this post for a tattoo parlor that specialized in covering up abuse scars. It took me a while but I finally got the courage to go in, and I’m so happy I did. Now when I look at my body, I see this. I see beauty. I see life. I don’t see drunken rages and broken bottles._

_He might’ve hurt me, but what he did isn’t going to_ define _me.”_

That was the most common tag with all these pictures: #MyScarsDontDefineMe.

Flowers, forests, birds, dreamcatchers, feathers, even a giant waterfall. Every picture was something beautiful. Sam couldn’t bring himself to look away. The idea of it was just, it was _amazing_. The strength that these men and women had! He couldn’t imagine how strong they had to be to go in and actually let someone see their scars. Let a person touch them enough to put a tattoo overtop of them.

Sam’s eyes traveled down to the arm he had resting on the table. Just on that arm alone, there were plenty of scars. Some that he didn’t mind, and some he wished he didn’t ever have to look at again. Like the long, thin one that ran down the length of his forearm. One of the picture’s he’d seen had been a feather that ran down the length of someone’s arm. That worked nicely to cover up a long scar like this. He could do something like that. If people saw it, they wouldn’t assume anything was hiding underneath. They’d have no reason to know. Having someone look at a tattoo instead of seeing the scar…

A shudder ran down Sam’s body. He curled his hand into a fist and closed his eyes. As amazing as it sounded, this wasn’t… it wasn’t for him. This wasn’t something he could do. Finding the courage to go in and let someone cover up the scars on his arms, sure. That he could do. His legs? Yeah, those would be easy. But what about the rest of him? What about the scars that he truly hated? The ones he wanted covered up more than anything?

The big, thick scar that sat on his spine from where Jake had stabbed him all those years and years ago. Demons had brought him back, sure, but they hadn’t promised to bring him back _whole_. Sam still carried the scar from that, and the occasional back pain to go with it.

At least seven different scars from stab wounds on his stomach. Two gunshot scars on his chest. One on his left arm, another on his right wrist.

Those were just the scars that came from the times he’d _died_. Those were the ones he wouldn’t be able to just pretend they were normal. Not with the way they looked. No tattoo artist would see those and think they were anything but what they were. There was no way Sam could sit there and answer questions about them or explain how it was he was still _alive_.

There were other scars as well that Sam would be happy never to see again. Scars from torture, from times he’d been held prisoner, times that he’d been stupid or made a mistake. Each one was a mark of a time he hadn’t been good enough, fast enough, _strong_ enough. To replace them with something else, something that _did_ make him feel strong, _God_ , he’d love it.

But he couldn’t. Sam blew out a breath and opened his eyes again. He stared at the images on the screen in front of him and his stomach twisted in a strange mixture of self-loathing and regret. Without realizing he was going to do it, he reached out and snapped the laptop shut.

“Woah,” A voice said from off to the right, startling Sam bad enough that he actually jumped. His head snapped to the right. Gabriel was sitting on the table just a few feet away from him, watching him with raised eyebrows and a slightly amused look on his face. “Twitchy, aren’t you?”

Sam drew in a careful breath and blew it back out, trying to slow down his racing heart. “What do you want, Gabriel?”

“What, a guy can’t come check on his favorite moose?” Gabriel asked innocently. He pulled a box of what looked like Junior Mints – Sam’s favorite – from his pocket and shook a few into his hand. Tossing them into his mouth, the trickster grinned at him. “You snapped that lid shut awfully fast. You out here looking at porn, Samarino? Right out in the open where anyone could see you?” Shaking his head, Gabriel ‘tsk’d’ lightly. “For shame, kiddo.”

Color flooded Sam’s cheeks. “I’m not looking at porn!” That was the last thing he wanted to be doing, _especially_ out here in the library where any of them could come across him.

The grin Gabriel wore grew even wider. “Me thinks the lady doth protest too much.” Without warning, the box of Junior Mints was chucked at Sam, who had to scramble to catch it. Gabriel took advantage of that by snatching the laptop. He had it on his lap and open before Sam could even scramble to reach out and stop him. “Let’s see what we have here! What was little Sammy Winchester looking at…”

“Gabriel!” Sam dropped the candy on the table and reached out to try and grab his laptop, only to have Gabriel lift a foot and push it against his chest, barely even putting any pressure and yet effectively keeping him back. Sam tried to shove his foot away, to no avail. “Dammit, Gabriel, give me back my computer!”

Gabriel wasn’t even looking at Sam. He was holding the laptop with one hand and using the other to scroll through things. Some of the teasing had faded from his face, broken up by a hint of what Sam thought might be confusion. “This is what you were embarrassed about?” He turned his head and shot Sam an incredulous look. “Tattoos? You’re embarrassed about looking at _tattoos_?”

 _He hasn’t seen yet. He doesn’t know_. _He doesn’t know._ Sam tried again to shove Gabriel’s foot off his chest. He pulled up his best glare, what Dean called his ‘bitchface’, and snapped “It’s none of your business what I was doing. Just give it back, Gabriel!”

Gabriel leaned back so that he was just out of Sam’s long reach. His eyes were back on the screen and the confusion there had grown a little bit. “There’s no shame in looking at tattoos, kiddo. Half you humans have them! Hell, even _I_ have one. You’ve got… no…”

Dread filled Sam’s stomach. He stopped struggling, stopped pushing against Gabriel’s foot, and went completely still. It was clear on Gabriel’s face what he’d just seen. Something had to have explained it, or little pieces clicked together. Either way, Sam could see the realization that filled Gabriel’s face even before sad eyes lifted to lock onto his. “Sam…”

The sound of Gabriel’s voice broke the spell. Sam jerked back, moving so quickly that Gabriel’s foot thumped down, almost toppling the archangel.

He would’ve shot up out of his chair, too, if Gabriel hadn’t lunged forward, one hand coming out to catch his arm. “Sam, wait!”

Sam jerked back from Gabriel’s touch like it burned. He saw from the corner of his eye as the archangel froze before carefully drawing his hand back. He didn’t need to try and hold Sam in place anymore, anyways. Sam was frozen in his chair, his arms curling in around his waist and his eyes dropping down to his lap. Shame burned hot through him. He hadn’t wanted anyone to see this. Hadn’t wanted them to realize, to _know_.

The room was quiet for a long, long moment. It was Gabriel who moved first. There was the soft sound of the laptop clicking shut and then the gentle scrape as it was laid down on the table. Sam braced, so sure that Gabriel was going to try and move towards him again, only nothing happened. There were no hands reaching for him, no one touching him. When Sam snuck a look up, he found Gabriel still sitting in the same spot he’d been in before, only he’d drawn his legs up and crossed them underneath him. His elbows were resting on his knees and his hands were hanging loosely between them. But his eyes… his eyes were right on Sam.

When he spoke, the archangel kept his voice low and even, without a hint of judgment in it. “There’s no reason to be embarrassed about this, Sam.”

Sam huffed out a breath that was just a bit too shaky for his liking. “I know.” He couldn’t bring himself to look back up at Gabriel, though. His eyes found a spot on the table in front of him where there was a small chip in the wood and he found himself focusing on that.

“Is this something you want to do?”

The question was asked in all honesty, like Gabriel would accept his answer either way – something that Sam had come to enjoy quite about talking with him – and it inspired an equally honest answer from Sam. “It doesn’t matter.”

Gabriel didn’t argue with him. He didn’t scoff or berate him, or tell him not to be stupid. He just asked “Why not?”

The shame and embarrassment inside of Sam twisted into something uglier, something that felt like anger, only it cut him instead. He fisted his hands in his shirt and then forced himself to let go. Never once did his eyes lift from that small chip in the table. “It’s not like I could go, anyways. It was just… it was just a stupid idea, that’s all.”

“It’s not stupid, Sammy,” Gabriel said softly. He was capable of the kind of softness sometimes that Sam had never even suspected. There were times where he was fierce and sharp, dangerous, and then there were times like this where he was so gentle with Sam in ways no one ever had been before. “If it’s something you want, it’s not stupid, and there’s no one saying you can’t go. I’ll help you find a place if it’s what you want, make sure it’s all clean and on the up-and-up.”

“ _It doesn’t matter_.” The repeated words came out so much sharper this time. The pain Sam felt leaked into them, and it was like a dam breaking. Like popping the seal on a bottle and all the stuff that had been built up inside just came pouring out. “It doesn’t matter if you find me someplace good, or clean, or whatever it is you think it needs. It doesn’t matter if you find someone who does scars or any of that crap.” Sam’s eyes finally snapped up to lock onto Gabriel’s and he knew there was a wealth of emotion there that he couldn’t hide anymore. “All it’d take is one look and they’d start asking questions I can’t exactly answer, now can I?”

His temper didn’t startle Gabriel in the least. The archangel didn’t even flinch when Sam shoved back from the table, or when he let out a breath that almost sounded like a growl.

Sam pushed his hands up over his face and scrubbed at it before bringing them up to push his hair back. This was so _stupid_. Why did this bother him so much? It was just a dumb idea he’d been looking at on the laptop. Why on earth was he so bothered by this? When he dropped his hands again, his hair slid back down into his face. He didn’t bother trying to push it back this time. He just let it hang there as he stared down at his hands.

If this had been anyone else, Sam might’ve kept quiet. He might’ve just brushed this off and pretended he was fine and moved on. With Gabriel… that wasn’t necessary. Since the archangel had come to stay at the bunker with them, he and Sam had gotten close. He was the only one that Sam had been able to tell anything at all to about the Cage.

Licking his lips, Sam brought his hands together, absently pressing his thumb into his palm.

“It’s a great idea,” he finally said, softer than before. The anger had drained out of his voice. “I mean, hunting gives you a lot of scars. Covering them up with something like that, it’d be nice. But I…” He paused and bit at his bottom lip. This had been hard enough in his head. Finding the words was even harder. “…how would I explain some of my scars? I’m not, I wasn’t as lucky as Dean. When I died, I didn’t get rebuilt by an angel who cared about me. I’ve got scars from each time I’ve died, and anyone who looks at them is going to know there’s no way I should be alive.”

He heard a soft, sucked in breath from Gabriel, and he knew the archangel was about to speak, but the words were coming too fast now for Sam to stop them. They just kept pouring out of him; all these bitter, dark thoughts that were bouncing around inside his skull.

“Even if I didn’t have those, it’s not like the rest of my scars are any better. I’ve got so many, it’s a wonder I’ve got any normal skin left, and they just keep adding on and adding on. Hell, Gabriel, I’ve got _Cage scars._ Granted, my body was only in the Cage for a day, topside, but that equals out to just a bit longer down there. Enough time for him to have a little fun before he was forced to just play with my soul instead.”

“Sam, sweetheart… why didn’t you ever say anything?” Gabriel asked achingly. There was a hint of anger at the edge of his words now. Sam had to remind himself that that anger wasn’t for him. Gabriel wasn’t angry at _Sam_. They’d had that talk plenty of times when Sam opened up to Gabriel about things. Gabriel had reassured him time and time again that it wasn’t Sam he was mad at. He was mad _for_ Sam, not _at_ him.

Sam shrugged one shoulder. “I didn’t think it mattered.”

That seemed to be the last straw. There was finally movement from the table. Sam looked up as Gabriel dropped down onto his feet and closed the little bit of distance between them. Warm hands came out and, once Gabriel was sure Sam had seen them, they cupped his face and forced his head up more until he had no choice but to look up into Gabriel’s eyes.

Some of that softness was gone now, replaced with a fierce determination that stole Sam’s voice away. “You listen here and you listen well, Sam Winchester,” Gabriel practically growled at him. “I’m going to tell you this as many times as it takes to get it through your thick head. What you want, matters. What you feel, matters. _You_ matter. Don’t you dare let anyone else ever tell you otherwise, not even yourself.”

Sam pressed his lips together, not trusting his voice. His hands came up almost against his will to grasp on to the bottom of Gabriel’s jacket. He clenched the fabric in his fists and held on to him like he was the only anchor in the storm.

“Now,” Gabriel gentled his touch and let his thumbs stroke over Sam’s cheeks while he smiled down at the hunter. “Is this something you really want, gorgeous? Hm? Is this something you wanna do?”

“I, I don’t…”

One of Gabriel’s thumbs pressed over Sam’s lips. “Ah, ah. I don’t wanna hear about what you think others are gonna think, or what you _should_ or _shouldn’t_ do. I’m asking what _you_ want. Do you want this, Sammy?”

With Gabriel’s thumb still over his lips, the only thing Sam could do was nod.

A bright smile lit Gabriel’s features. “Good. So, next question. I get that you’re not comfortable with the idea of having to explain your scars to someone, an I get it, kiddo. I do. What if I went ahead and explained a few things to the artist? I could even wipe their memory afterwards, so they’d never even know you were there.”

Could he handle that? Sam didn’t just brush it off immediately. He made himself stop and think about it. Gabriel was trying to offer him a compromise of some sorts here. He wasn’t just ignoring what Sam wanted – he was trying to find a way to help him get it.

But… having someone know about where his scars came from, and having to wipe their memory afterwards… could he really do that? Could he really let Gabriel do that? It didn’t seem right. Not for something as stupid as a tattoo.

Gabriel nodded like he’d followed along with Sam’s thoughts. Which, frighteningly enough, was a distinct possibility. “All right.” For a moment, Gabriel stared down at him, and Sam watched as he furrowed his brow in clear thought. That furrow vanished and determination took it’s place. “What about if I do it?”

That was enough to startled a surprised “What?” from Sam that was only slightly muffled by the thumb on his lips.

Moving his thumb, Gabriel smiled down at him. “What, you think I’ve never done a tattoo before, kiddo? I spent a _long_ time as a pagan. Tattoos are kinda important to the culture, you know. I’d be a pretty bad god if I didn’t know how to do it.”

Letting Gabriel do his tattoo… Sam turned that thought over in his mind. He trusted Gabriel not to hurt him, which was important. He also trusted that the archangel could fix any mistakes he made. In fact, it’d honestly be easier to list the things that he _didn’t_ trust Gabriel for. It’d definitely be smaller.

He knew Gabriel wouldn’t make the offer if he didn’t really mean it, and if he didn’t think he could do it. That wasn’t in question here for Sam. What was in question, what had him clenching a little at Gabriel’s jacket and biting on the inside of his lip, was the knowledge that, if he were going to do this, it meant… it meant Gabriel was going to see him. All of him. The one being in the world that Sam ever found himself able to fantasize about anymore, the one whose opinion of what was hidden under Sam’s clothes mattered more than anyone else’s, and the one who Sam had been the most reluctant to actually show his scars to. They’d talked about some of them, or at least what caused them, but Sam had never _showed_ him. Could he really bring himself to do it?

“It’s okay to say no, Sam.” Gabriel interrupted his thoughts with those careful words.

Sam blinked away his thoughts and let himself look up at Gabriel’s face. _Really_ look at him. There was no lie there; no hidden _anything_. Gabriel actually meant it when he told Sam he could say no.

Somehow, that made the decision so much easier.

A small smile curled the corners of Sam’s mouth. It softened his expression and took some of the darkness out of his eyes, just as it seemed to do the same for Gabriel. “Yeah,” he said, the word coming easily to his lips. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

Gabriel’s smile was bright enough to light up the room. He bent down and pressed a loud, smacking kiss against Sam’s forehead, startling a laugh out of the hunter. Then he let go of Sam’s face, only to hop back up on the table right in front of him. A giant sketchpad and pencil appeared in his hands. “Great! Why don’t you tell me what it is you’re looking for, eh, kiddo? Maybe we can get this bad boy planned out before dinner. If we’re lucky, we might even be able to get started on it this weekend!”

The jump from serious to grinning had Sam off kilter for just a moment. He recovered quickly, though.

His own smile grew a little bit more. It was hard not to smile in the face of Gabriel’s cheer. Though Sam wouldn’t admit it, he was a bit glad that Gabriel had decided to steal his laptop from him. If he hadn’t, Sam never would’ve got up the courage to bring up this topic himself. He never would’ve dared ask for something like this. Yet, because Gabriel was a nosy little bastard, here they were. Gabriel was watching Sam intently, pencil poised over the sketchpad and eyes right on Sam, that same smile still on his lips.

Sam relaxed down into his chair. “Well, I was thinking maybe something along the lines of a… a tree…”


End file.
